"John Donne."
Isidore gestured in agitation. "That's worse than anything I ever heard of. Can't you call the police?"
"No."
"And they're after you? They're apt to come here and kill you?" He understood, now, why the girl acted in so secretive a fashion. "No wonder you're scared and don't want to see anybody." But he thought, It must be a delusion. She must be psychotic. With delusions of persecution. Maybe from brain damage due to the dust; maybe she's a special. "I'll get them first," he said.
"With what?" Faintly, she smiled; she showed her small, even, white teeth
"I'll get a license to carry a laser beam. It's easy to get, out here where there's hardly anybody; the police don't patrol - you're expected to watch out for yourself"
"How about when you're at work?"
"I'll take a leave of absence!"
Pris said, "That's very nice of you, J. R. Isidore. But if bounty hunters got the others, got Max Polokov and Garland and Luba and Hasking and Roy Baty - " She broke off. "Roy and Irmgard Baty. If they're dead then it really doesn't matter. They're my best friends. Why the hell don't I hear from them, I wonder?" She cursed, angrily.
Making his way into the kitchen he got down dusty, long unused plates and bowls and glasses; he began washing them in the sink, running the rusty hot water until it cleared - at last. Presently Pris appeared, seated herself at the table. He uncorked the bottle of Chablis, divided the peaches and the cheese and the bean curd.
"What's that white stuff? Not the cheese." She pointed.
"Made from soy bean whey. I wish I had some - " He broke off, flushing. "It used to be eaten with beef gravy."
"An android," Pris murmured. "That's the sort of slip an android makes. That's what gives it away." She came over, stood beside him, and then to his stunned surprise put her arm around his waist and for an instant pressed against him.
"I'll try a slice of peach," she said, and gingerly picked out a slippery pink-orange furry slice with her long fingers. And then, as she ate the slice of peach, she began to cry. Cold tears descended her cheeks, splashed on the bosom of her dress. He did not know what to do, so he continued dividing the food. "Goddamn it," she said, furiously. "Well - " She moved away from him, paced slowly, with measured steps, about the room. " - see, we lived on Mars. That's how come I know androids." Her voice shook but she managed to continue; obviously it meant a great deal to her to have someone to talk to.
"And the only people on Earth that you know," Isidore said, "are your fellow ex-emigrants."
"We knew each other before the trip. A settlement near New New York. Roy Baty and Irmgard ran a drugstore; he was a pharmacist and she handled the beauty aids, the creams and ointments; on Mars they use a lot of skin conditioners. I - " She hesitated. "I got various drugs from Roy - I needed them at first because - well, anyhow, it's an awful place. This " - she swept in the room, the apartment, in one violent gesture - " this is nothing. You think I'm suffering because I'm lonely. Hell, all Mars is lonely. Much worse than this."
"Don't the androids keep you company? I heard a commercial on - " Seating himself he ate, and presently she too picked up the glass of wine; she sipped expressionlessly. "I understood that the androids helped."
"The androids," she said, "are lonely, too."
"Do you like the wine?"
She set down her glass. "It's fine."
"It's the only bottle I've seen in three years."
"We came back," Pris said, "because nobody should have to live there. It wasn't conceived for habitation, at least not within the last billion years. It's so old. You feel it in the stones, the terrible old age. Anyhow, at first I got drugs from Roy; I lived for that new synthetic pain-killer, that silenizine. And then I met Horst Hartman, who at that time ran a stamp store, rare postage stamps; there's so much time on your hands that you've got to have a hobby, something you can pore over endlessly. And Horst got me interested in pre-colonial fiction."
"You mean old books?"
"Stories written before space travel but about space travel."
"How could there have been stories about space travel before - "
"The writers," Pris said, "made it up."
"Based on what?"
"On imagination. A lot of times they turned out wrong. For example they wrote about Venus being a jungle paradise with huge monsters and women in breastplates that glistened." She eyed him. "Does that interest you? Big women with long braided blond hair and gleaming breastplates the size of melons?"
"No," he said.
"Irmgard is blond," Pris said. "But small. Anyhow, there's a fortune to be made in smuggling pre-colonial fiction, the old magazines and books and films, to Mars. Nothing is as exciting. To read about cities and huge industrial enterprises, and really successful colonization. You can imagine what it might have been like. What Mars ought to be like. Canals."
"Canals?" Dimly, he remembered reading about that; in the olden days they had believed in canals on Mars.
"Crisscrossing the planet," Pris said. "And beings from other stars. With infinite wisdom. And stories about Earth, set in our time and even later. Where there's no radioactive dust."
"I would think," Isidore said, "it would make you feel worse."
"It doesn't," Pris said curtly.
"Did you bring any of that pre-colonial reading material back with you? " It occurred to him that he ought to try some.